This past weekend I celebrated my birthday and I ate like a fool.  It wasn’t just one meal out with loved ones. It was a parade of indulgence, including 4 restaurant meals, 3 chocolate desserts, 2 different kinds of creamed spinach and a host of forgettable things in between.  Some of it was good, like the lobster dinner, the flank steak pho, and homemade black forest cake with whipped cream–totally worth the calories in my opinion.  But not everything was worth the intended hedonism, including plain dinner rolls slathered in butter and this mayonnaise-y coleslaw thingy.

Intermittently this year I have been journaling which foods have seemed “worth it” vs “not worth it”, including reasons why and sometimes feelings about choices I made.  The intent is to create awareness about the emotional aspect of food and cut down on eating things that add little pleasure value but take up prime space in my belly.  Some of the foods I have enjoyed the most aren’t traditional  indulgences, but feel like a treat for their flavor, experience, or the company with which they are savored.

    

One of the reasons I have trouble with overeating is there was a time where I did not have enough to eat, and there wasn’t much of a choice of what to put in my face.  It was more like I had to beg, scavenge, or sometimes even steal what I could. And that feeling has not left me although it has been almost 20 years since I have really been hungry like that. I always think of food as scarce no matter how abundant my life has become or how well stocked the pizza section at the buffet is. Thankfully, I have hit the point in my life where I can buy food every day if I want to and don’t have to worry about going hungry. I know this, but I want to feel it and live with the reality that I can be choosy.

The hardest decisions are when there are too many choices or too few. I get so delusional when I am hungry that everything looks good.  When confronted with an array of foods, like at Costco with the aisles of samples, I usually feel compelled to try them all. If someone has brought shitty donuts or cookies to work I will sometimes eat one (or more) just because they are easy and right there, they are free, and they were a gift of sorts. When I am stuck somewhere or am super busy I might cave and eat what’s available rather than holding out for something decent.  I really don’t need to eat another piece of disgusting neon-colored grocery store bakery birthday cake at the next kiddie party–I have already had that adventure.

I stay away from “diets” per se, but I’ve been working on changing my eating habits for the better. My hope is that journaling the Worth its and Not Worth its will be helpful for me to mindfully eat the things that sustain my body and that I like.  Eating should be joyful. Feelings of shame, guilt, or loss of control should have no place at my table. Just because eating should feel good doesn’t mean that I should let my feelings alone tell me what to eat. I need to let some logic into my choices so that impulse and conditioning do not dictate everything I consume. A balanced diet is not only about what types of food you eat, but negotiating pleasure with healthy sustenance too.